The world’s worst nuclear disaster was, ironically, the result of a completely unnecessary safety test. It was the night of 25th April, 1986, and reactor number 4 at the electricity-producing Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine was scheduled to be shut down for routine maintenance. The workers made the fatal decision to see if, in the event of a shut down, enough electricity would remain in the grid to power the cooling system for the reactor core; they thus turned off the emergency cooling system.
The carnage that ensued was the result of a culmination of factors, including a design flaw in the type of RBMK reactor at Chernobyl, operational errors and safety procedures which were at best not adhered to and at worst totally ignored. What resulted was a power surge, which in turn led to a massive escape of steam triggering a full-blown nuclear explosion.
At 1:26 on the morning of 26th April, 1986, the reactor’s 500-tonne top was breached by a huge fireball discharging nine tonnes of radioactive material into the atmosphere, more than ninety times the amount released in the Hiroshima bomb. The deadly radiation cloud, rich in cesium-137 and strontium-90, was blown north and west over the next few days, falling patchily over Kiev, but mainly Belarus. In typical Soviet style, the problem was not reported and May Day celebrations continued on the streets of the Ukrainian capital and, terrifyingly, in the impossibly dangerous Chernobyl area, in particular the Soviet model town of Pripyat, within spitting distance of the stricken reactor. It was only when the poisonous radiation clouds were detected as far north as Scandinavia that Swedish scientists alerted the world and the USSR had to come clean.
For many, by this time it was too late; two people had been killed in the accident itself, but 29 brave firemen were sent in to extinguish the blaze and had neither knowledge of nor protection from what they were dealing with. Each had perished horribly and agonisingly within six weeks. Some 135,000 souls were evacuated ‘temporarily’ from Pripyat without any belongings; they have never been able to return.
The long term effects of the disaster are still being evaluated. The most obvious impact has been a massive increase in cases of thyroid cancer in young children, mainly due to the fact that their cells are still dividing and, as they grow, their bodies absorb radioactive substances which mimic essential calcium. The number of extra cases is thought to be around 2,000. Of the 600,000 ‘liquidators’ sent in to clean up, more than 4,000 have died from exposure to radiation, and a further 170,000 have developed other fatal diseases.
Furthermore, some 35,000 square kilometres of forest have been contaminated, leading to unacceptably high radiation levels in meat, milk, vegetables and fruit. The most dangerous foodstuffs are berries and mushrooms. Silt carried down the Dnipro river is highly radioactive, although it’s almost impossible to measure constant levels precisely. Birth defects, suicides and deaths from heart disease and alcoholism are exceptionally high, and by 2015 it is estimated the ‘accident’ will have cost the economy in excess of $200 billion.
It was as late as the year 2000 that the last working reactor at Chernobyl, number 3, was finally decommissioned and shut down. Number 4 is still a deep, dark, threatening ghost, ‘a monster which is always near’ according to one of the 8,000 scientific staff and monitors who travel to the site on a daily basis from the new town of Slavutych.
In the months that followed the explosion, the destroyed reactor and over 180 tonnes of radioactive chunks were hastily covered over with a concrete and steel sarcophagus.
In the intervening years, some 350 ardent locals have moved back into the zone, preferring to take their chances with the silent, unseen spectre of radiation than face life in the crowded tenements they had relocated to. They grow and eat contaminated food in contaminated land, and drink contaminated water, yet they not only survive but thrive. It is almost as much of a phenomenon as the flourishing wildlife inhabiting this unlikely natural haven, almost completely reclaimed by mother nature.